History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 32

History - Essay Example Yet, new inventions and technological up-gradations are important. Neil Postman has identified a framework that has five factors that he thought is essential for any technological development. The experts feel that the frame work holds good for almost all of the technologies. The five factors are as follows: As the new technology comes in, it has certain advantages and disadvantages associated with it. But those advantages and dis-advantages are never distributed equally among the population and always there are certain gainers and some losers when a new technology is introduced. Western America had been famous for mines. It was in 1848, when James Marshall found gold at a ranch in Northern California. Soon, whole lot of Americans gathered in the region in search of luck through minerals. Some mined for gold while others for silver and other precious minerals. But the technology of mining changed soon. The crude wooden sluices that were used previously were replaced by hydraulic mining that used water jets to break the earth. Such a change impacted greatly over the economy and the society which can be co-related with the Neil Postman’s framework of new technology. As the first principle goes, the new technology called for huge investments and many of the small miners could not bear the cost and they lost the mines to big Western companies. The new technology was advantageous for the big established players and the companies as it called for huge investments. The entrepreneurs who dreamt of making it big through mines were definitely in the disadvantageous positions. The message (third principle) that came with the new technology was that more power was bestowed in the hands of the powerful and the rich with sound infrastructure only could take advantage of it. Though Postman says that the power should not be left to the few, in his fourth principle, most unfortunately same happened. It was only the big companies